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DARAH HUBBARD
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DARAH HUBBARD
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DARAH HUBBARD
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DARAH HUBBARD
Editor's Note: (This information appeared as a sidebar in the November article "Cowtown: Sprawling Ground of Western Swing").
No disguising the personal biases that must shape anybody’s best-of catalogue of Western swing. My preferences will vary from time to time, influenced by whatever I’ve been hearing lately — by projects in which I’ve taken a direct hand, whether as a contributing musician or as a curatorial historian — and always by a grounded recognition of such essential primary-source barnstormers as Bob Wills and Milton Brown.
Deeper digs can be made with a “Western swing” or “78 rpm” keyword search at such sites as YouTube and archive.org. “Bottomless digs” might be more like it. Many of us still prefer the sonic immediacy of physical media, whether in deep-grooved shellac platters, vinyl LPs, or compact disks.
John Wooley’s “Swing on This!” (KWGS-Radio NPR Tulsa; weekly) — Wooley’s web-streaming hour is likely to range into such modern-day phenomena as the relentlessly progressive Asleep at the Wheel and steel-guitar stylist Rose Sinclair. The program is just as certain to showcase the founding artists of the 1930s and 1940s. A recurring feature, “The San Antonio Rose Parade,” deploys a vast and imaginative array of remakes and variations of a Bob Wills signature tune. The time is 7 p.m. Saturdays at publicradiotulsa.org.
“The Complete Recordings of the Father of Western Swing: Milton Brown & the Musical Brownies” (Texas Rose Records CD Box; 1995) — Historian Cary Ginell’s epic compilation chronicles the rise of Fort Worth’s Milton Brown in 120 tracks, spanning 1932-1936. Brown’s passion for jazz and blues distinguishes even the mellower or more sentimental selections, defining the roles of fiddle, guitars (steel and conventional), and piano for generations to come.
The Dal-Jam Reunion Band’s “Back Home Again: A Western Swing Reunion” (Origin Jazz Library CD; 2024) — Cary Ginell turned producer during 1983-1984 with these summit-meeting sessions of first-generation artists in advancing age, including many contemporaries of Milton Brown and Bob Wills. Fueled by enthusiasm and a festive spontaneity, the recordings recapture a sense of how it must have felt to have invented the music in the first place. (Full disclosure: I took part as a second-generation upstart pianist, surrounded by titanic figures from the Light Crust Doughboys, the Musical Brownies, and so forth.)
“The Essential Bob Wills: 1935-1947” (Sony Legacy; 1984) — A time capsule from bandleader Wills’ heyday, capturing his evolving Texas Playboys ensemble at a sustained peak of popularity. The cherry-picked discography couples nicely with the elegiac For the Last Time album (Capitol Nashville; 1973), which served as Wills’ bucket-list reunion of his peak-period Texas Playboys personnel.
“Asleep at the Wheel: Live at Billy Bob’s Texas” (Smith Music; 2003) — Ray Benson’s Austin-based outfit, a catalytic presence in the Western swing renaissance, finds a simpatico environment in the Fort Worth landmark. Asleep at the Wheel helped mightily to restore Western swing as a fashionable domain during the 1970s — and Benson has cranked the momentum all along and ever since.
Various Artists: “OKeh Western Swing” (CBS Records; 1989) — The disk emphasizes Bob Wills’ contributions, notably in a bawdy romp called “Oozlin’ Daddy Blues,” but burns plenty of hay throughout, with such lively outfits as the Crystal Springs Ramblers (“Fort Worth Stomp”) and the Light Crust Doughboys (post-Wills). The historic OKeh label was a subsidiary of Columbia Records, dealing in vernacular American musical forms from Deep Blues to Cajun/Creole Zydeco.
Various Artists: “Western Swingin’” (Fantastic Voyage Records; 2011) — The triple-disk anthology reaches from the 1930s into the 1950s, tracking the evolution of the idiom into a confident approach to rock ’n’ roll. Tommy Duncan (long the dominant voice in Wills’ Texas Playboys) appears with an emphatic twist on Jerry Lieber & Mike Stoller’s “Hound Dog.” Duncan’s interpretation is close to the original by Big Mama Thornton — and a far cry from Elvis Presley’s hit version. And Hank Thompson’s attack on “Good Rockin’ Tonight” compares favorably with the R&B/R&R versions by Roy Brown and Presley.
Various Artists: Old-Time Texas Fiddling, Vol. 1: Texas Farewell (County Records; 1993) — This bold compilation from 1928-1929 prefigures the emergence of Western swing by a tight margin, notably in “Beaumont Rag” by Oscar & Doc Harper, “Three-in-One Two-Step” by the East Texas Serenaders, and “There’s a Brown Skin Girl Down the Road Somewhere” by Eck Robertson. Robertson was a breakout fiddle stylist whom I knew in his later years as an expert piano-tuning technician. Key influential components fall decisively into place, here.
